


Shut up and stay with me

by MarauderCracker



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel 616
Genre: Canon compliant future fic, Character Death, Gen, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-06 00:10:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5395370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarauderCracker/pseuds/MarauderCracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you believe in soulmates, Clint?" Kate asks him one day. They're sitting on his roof, both with their legs crossed at the ankles, Lucky sleeping between them. Clint's barefoot, even though the night is cold, and he takes almost a minute to answer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shut up and stay with me

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this text post](http://aceofultron.tumblr.com/post/115638999945/soulmate-au-where-instead-of-your-soulmates-first): _"soulmate AU where instead of your soulmates first words to you written on your skin it’s their last words you ever hear them say so you don’t know who your soulmate is until you lose them."_ I regret everything.

 

"Do you believe in soulmates, Clint?" Kate asks him one day. They're sitting on his roof, both with their legs crossed at the ankles, Lucky sleeping between them. Clint's barefoot, even though the night is cold, and he takes almost a minute to answer. 

"I'm not sure anymore," he finally admits. "I don't think it matters. If they exist, whether we believe or not won't change fate. If they don't, and everything is pure coincidence..."

"It doesn't matter," Kate finishes. "And if they exist, and we are meant to lose them anyway, it doesn't matter either."

"Yeah." He takes a sip from the thermos with coffee they've brought with them, then offers it to her. They look at the stars in silence for a while.

 

* * *

 

"Don't be an idiot," she yells, standing on his doorway with her backpack hanging from her right shoulder and her bow tightly held in her left hand. For a second he fears that she will walk away now --for good this time-- and he'll spend the rest of his life missing her. But she doesn't. "You don't make this choice, Clint. You don't choose to get yourself killed in a fucking suicide mission and expect me to just accept it."

 

Her eyes are bright with fury --or maybe with tears-- and Clint decides he doesn't want to find out if she's the one, not like this. "What is your plan, then?"

Kate closes the door behind her. She leaves her things on the kitchen counter and pulls out her phone. Now, calmer, she signs as she talks. "We're gonna need some help."

 

 

She drags her body across the floor, inch by painful inch. She's got two bulletwounds on her left thigh and another one on her right side, and every movement leaves a trail of blood behind her. Almost there. 

"Fucking--" Clint's curse is interrupted by what sounds like a punch to the nose. Kate can hear the bone cracking. Almost there. She reaches bloody, trembling fingers towards the unconscious body lying in front of her, and pulls the gun out of the guy's holster. The fight is still going on, but the blood loss is making Kate dizzy. Grunt, punch, groan, broken bone, yell, punch, someone hitting a wall --or is it a piece of furniture?

She struggles to turn on her back. "Come on, guys, three against one? Don't you think it's a little unfair?" Clint is joking, but his voice sounds strained. Kate gasps when the movement of her torso makes the bullet against her ribs shift. She keeps moving anyway, gathers all of her strength to sit up. 

"Really? That all you got?" Clint makes eye contact with her over one of the guys' shoulder. Kate aims for the head, but her vision is going blurry. 

She manages to hit one on the shoulderblade, another on the knee. Clint takes out the third one. The gun slips from her fingers. 

"Kate. Katie. Stay with me," Clint says, one arm around her shoulders, his free hand pressing against the bleeding wound on her torso. She's about to pass out. "You did a good job, Hawkeye."

 

 

He looks at her, sitting on his kitchen counter with a coffee mug on her left hand and a bleeding cut on her right arm, and decides that he doesn't care if he's meant to lose her.

His stitches aren't really delicate, but they are effective. Kate looks at his hands as he sews the wound shut, something that he can't quite read swimming in those eyes of hers. They're beautiful eyes --he's always liked them-- with dark blue irises, sharp and angular. He cleans the cut once more when he's finished, throws the gloves and gauze in the trash.

"Kate..." he starts, only to realize he doesn't really know what he wants to say. (Something ridiculous  like "I'm better with you." Something cheesy, like "maybe we aren't soulmates, and maybe that'd mean I get to stay by your side.") He feels like a kid, trying to ask her to be his friend. Kate sits with the upper part of her suit hanging from her hips and blood stains on her sports bra, drinking coffee on his kitchen counter. She's smiling. "Kate..."

"Clint. Don't be an idiot." She tugs at his shirt's collar, knocks their mugs together, runs a playful hand through his hair. "Can you pretend to be a normal person and hug me?"

It's the longest hug Clint has ever given (or received), Kate's tiny frame wrapped firmly in his arms, her chin on his shoulder. He sleeps on the couch that night, and stitches Kate up again the next morning, while they have breakfast.

* * *

 

The first time he hears it it's Barney. "Don't be an idiot, Clint," his brother says. He repeats it a lot during their teenage years, and every time Clint panics for a second. There are people whose soulmates are relatives or best friends, purely platonic relationships meant to last them a lifetime --it wouldn't be exceptional for Clint's to be Barney, because Barney is the only person he has in this world. (Everything goes to hell, years later, but the last words Barney tells him before walking out are others, so Clint can hold on hope.)

 

There are others. It's fit, that he should be so reckless, so stupid that almost every person in his life says those exact same words to him. "Don't be an idiot," says Natasha, and Bobbi, and Bucky, and Steve. Hell, he knows that Steve isn't his soulmate --the world wouldn't be so cruel to burden a person like Steve with the mess that is Clint Barton-- and yet every time he fears this is the moment he finds his soulmate --and loses then forever. Each time he bows to stop ruining every good relationship that he stumbles into, to stop being an idiot. Every time he fails. 

He looks at the words that have been inked on his left thigh since he was about twelve, and wonders who will be the next person to walk out on him, what will he do to make his soulmate say those words before closing a door that they'll never open again. Hey, at least of that he's sure: he's going to lose his soulmate in some stupid, predictable fight over one of his many flaws, and they'll never speak to him again. But that's better than the love of his life dying right after calling him an idiot, so he bets on a nasty break-up.

 

* * *

 

Kate learns what the legend on her ribs says when she's ten, watching the news. 'The Hawkeye', they call him, and he's the worst dressed Avenger in history. Kate knows this, because she's a very fashionable kid. But she loves purple and thinks archery is pretty cool, so she decides that it's not so terrible that the last words her soulmate will ever say to her are about that ridiculous superhero. It makes sense when she's ten. 

"Good job, Hawkeye," Eli tells her once, and she almost has a heart attack. By the time she picked her favorite superhero's bow, she almost never thought about her soulmate mark anymore. She stopped believing in soulmates when she turned fourteen, but now all of her cynicism comes crashing down under a wave of terror. Eli offers his fist for her to bump, and she does so with a shaky hand. Though the bad guys are being brought in by the police and there seems to be no danger approaching, Kate doesn't relax until Eli starts talking about school. Only then does she allow herself to laugh at how silly the idea that Eli --cocky, stubborn, annoying Eli-- might be her soulmate, or that this could be the last time she ever talks to him. 

Over the next year she hears many people say those words to her. "Good job, Hawkeye," says Bucky Barnes once, and she almost throws up laughing at the idea that Bucky fucking Barnes might be her soulmate. Eventually, she stops noticing the words at all.

 

* * *

 

She pushes her sunglasses down to give him a look that Clint can only interpret as "are you sure you want to know?" He holds her stare, unflinching. 

"Well, she's... Hot. Like, really, most breathtaking woman I have ever seen. Evil hot, but..."

Clint smirks. He takes one sip from his coffee, scans the crowd from behind his cup. Kate's expression is somewhere between annoyed and inquisitive. After a minute where he doesn't say anything, she snaps. "What? Come on, what's so funny?"

"You totally slept with your archenemy."

"She's not my archenemy. I don't have archenemies, I'm not Spider-Man. I didn't-- Fuck off, Barton."

Clint's amused smile doesn't fade away, but Kate's blush eventually does. They get another coffee each.

"You've probably slept with some supervillains, come on," Kate comments after about half an hour of watching the street in silence. Clint muffles his laughs against his own arm. One of the baristas throws them an amused look, and Kate wonders how much of their conversation she's overheard. Clint's started talking louder recently --Wakandan hearing aids are pretty decent but he keeps saying his own voice sounds off-- so it might have been a lot.

"Well, technically, I have  _been_ a supervillain."

The barista seems even more intrigued at that, so Kate decides to switch to ASL once and for all. She's still got a secret identity to maintain, even if Clint has gone public already.

"So does this count as colluding with the enemy?"

Clint doesn't get to answer. He taps his forehead, shifts his head just so to tell her to look. Their mark is walking up to the barista, two guys who are very obviously bodyguards waiting at the door. Kate signals for him to stay here. "Watch this," she mouths before rushing towards the door. Clint keeps his eyes on the mark, just in case.

Kowaleski --Russian mob boss, currently in NYC to sell highly dangerous government intelligence-- asks for a mocha and tips generously. Clint follows her every step from behind his own coffee cup, but trusts Kate to know what she's doing. Kate's voice vibrates through his earpiece. "I'm taking down the security detail right now, you stall Kowaleski."

He jumps to action, leaves his coffee behind and rushes to tap her right shoulder. With his other hand, he swiftly pulls out the wallet from her jacket's left pocket. "Excuse me, miss," he says, hopes he's pulled off the charming smile just right. "You dropped this."

He looks over her shoulder and sees Kate, on the other side of the street, paying a street vendor for two apples. He wonders what the fuck she's planning to do, but remembers he has to look at the woman's lips if he really wants to get what she's saying. "God, thank you so much!"

"Ey, are you Russian?" he asks, as she pockets her wallet. She nods, a flash of distrust on her eyes. "I lived in Moscow for a couple years!"

"Really?" Through the glass door, she can see the two bodyguards idly looking at their phones, Kate setting her shoulder and aiming. The red apple flies over the cars and hits one of the guards on the forehead. Before the other can react, a second apple impacts against the side of his head. Clint has to make an effort not to laugh.

"Yeah, in the late nineties. My grandfather was Russian," he improvises. It works --her smile turns from hesitant to a warm, bright welcome. 

"From where?" she asks, honest curiosity in her expression. Clint digs through his memory from conversations he's had with Nat or Buck. 

"I think he lived most of his life in the Petrovka district." He sees Kate crouched next to one of the bodyguards, hushing bystanders with one hand while she zip-ties the guy's arms with the other. Then she talks into the intercom again. 

"Now, Clint." 

"Sorry, miss," he flashes Kowaleski one last charming grin before pulling at her left arm and twisting it behind her back. "I'm with S.H.I.E.L.D. and you're coming with me," he explains, and she curses at him in Russian. 

"Maria is sending us a car," Kate tells him when he steps out, and offers him a zip-tie to hold Kowaleski's hands. The woman gives Kate a deathly look when she searches her for weapons.

"The apples were... Definitely something stellar. Good job, Hawkeye." Kate grins at him.

 

"Oh, fuck off," Clint whimpers, and rolls over on the floor until he's laying face-up, staring at the ceiling. Kate's cheeky grin comes into his range of vision, and she crouches next to him.

"Don't tell me you're tired already," she says, mocking. Clint groans, doesn't move. Kate nudges his shoulder. "Come on, I don't wanna do weights."

 

 

"I might be getting too old to keep up," he jokes. Kate rolls her eyes and jumps back to her feet.

"Don't be an idiot," she says, and kicks his thigh with a dirty sneaker. Clint glares, but finally accepts her hand so she can help him to his feet. Before they shift to their fighting stances, Kate gives him a not-so-soft punch on the shoulder and signs, grinning, "you never could keep up, old man."

 

"Fuck you! Yeah!" Kate throws her fist up in the air, Clint throws the controller down on the floor. Lucky lifts his head, looks at them with mild annoyance and goes back to sleep. "Who's the best? I'm the best." Kate sing-songs, smiling at him. Clint rolls his eyes. They are both bad losers and even worse winners, he still doesn't know why they even bother playing competitive games anymore. Then he remembers --they were betting on who got to choose dinner. Damn.

"We are having sushi and beer, and you are paying," Kate tells him, hands quick to follow her words. "Also, you gotta say I'm the best." Clint groans, considers throwing a pillow at her. He ruffles her instead, and she bats his hands away with a shriek-

"Good job, Hawkeye."

"No, you gotta say 'you are the best, Hawkeye,' or it doesn't count." 

 

* * *

 

By the time fate catches up with them, they've heard the other say those exact words so many times that they don't even realize what's happening. The Hydra weapon they were after is finally destroyed, a crumbled ceiling blocking the exit to the lab. Kate's fingers leave bloody trails against the debris, but behind every piece of rubble she manages to pull out there is more. An entire wall of metal and concrete separates them. She can feel tears falling down her face.

Clint's voice cracks through the intercom, raspy with the smoke filling up the room. "Good job, Hawkeye," he manages. Kate can't tell if the vibration on her earpiece is more debris falling or Clint coughing.

"Hawkeye, stay with me. I'm gonna get you. Clint--" she pulls out another rock, barely notices one of her nails coming off. "Don't be an idiot." The earpiece is silent. 

**Author's Note:**

> Reblog on tumblr [@queerhawkeye](http://queerhawkeye.tumblr.com/post/134921071159/shut-up-and-stay-with-me-hawkeye-2). XO.


End file.
